From: "Jean-Francois Avon" <jf_avon@citenet.net>
Date: Wed, 22 May 1996 07:04:01 +0800
To: liberty@gate.net (Jim Ray)
Subject: Re: AP
Message-ID: <9605211558.AA12519@cti02.citenet.net>
MIME-Version: 1.0
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On 20 May 96 at 22:59, Jim Ray wrote:

> >Is there a Detweiller FAQ somewhere?
> 
> There's even a page

I found one out.  Interesting.  Vlad might very well fit the profile.


> >Interesting.  Has AP ever popped-up in the conventional medias?
> 
> AFAIK not yet, but I could be wrong. If I were Slick W.,
> it would.

I don't think Slick W. will make it pop-up.  They know damn well that 
no matter what the media might pretend the population thinks, there 
will be enough peoples more than willing to spend a few bucks to 
cause major joepardy.


> >Then, again, I know an awfull lot of people who would applaude
> >Bell.  But most of them are not computer litterate.  They are from
> >another generation, not brainwashed by "Don't ask what your country
> >can do for you; ask what you can do for your country"...
> 
> How do these people vote, though? [Prediction: majority statist.]
> you can't complain when the govt. gives what you ask for...

Theses peoples refuse to register their guns, although it is 
mandatory in canada (to be registered within 7(?) years...)

> Possibly. Bell insists Libertarians like me shouldn't worry.
> I worry, because statists' money spends just as well as mine.
> Tim joked a while back about putting a "fire-and-forget" K
> out on me when I was misquoted as the "Cyberangel."

So, are you saying that you chose to not endorse Bell's system 
because you fear you'd be a target?  Just asking...


> >> >You'll note that the psycho-epistemology necessary to
> >> >commit murder is quite close to the one necessary to coerce
> >> >poeples to pay taxes.
> >> 
> >> This kind of thinking might authorize a massive Cherokee
> >> massacre if it spread, IMO.
> >
> >Please, do point out the similarities and the differences... I
> >think that the context is very different.
> 
> Not really, only the time in history. Their property was
> 100% taken, and they were marched to OK from GA. The IRS
> may be bad...but they aren't THAT bad...[disclaimer: I
> am (a tiny) part Cherokee.

You did not answer my question:  When our local Mohawks accuse the 
white peoples to have stolen their land, I ask "when did I do that?  
I can't remember..."  I refuse to be held responsible for things that 
were done several hundred years ago.  Period.  As I said, I *never*, 
not even in my early years, believed in original sin.  


> >Are you talking of an open war a la Bosnia?  
> 
> Hopefully not.
What I meant is "do you believe that the AP scheme can lead to such 
events?"  I personnally believe that in the event AP is used against 
govt, no statist will be able to retaliate.  They might possibly make 
a few examples, but nobody will get fooled.  Anyways, since the 
system is completely delocalized, there is no target to aim at.  And 
furthermore, I think JB is right in saying that the middle-management 
level is much more likely to be hit first.  But thoses affluent 
statists are not middle-management. You have to figure out who will 
be targeted, and what are their means of reprisal.


> and the legitimate self defense
> options which are peaceful have not been adequately explored. IMO

Well, pardon my lack of imagination but I never found out too many 
effective ones.  I'll be delighted to consider any alternative you 
propose.  Encryption and anonymity tools *are* widely discussed and 
could make AP obsolete (hopefully).

> >> Bottom line for me: "Two wrongs don't make a right." 
> >
> >Please state the basic premise that make you declare what is
> >"wrong" in the context of AP.

> "Thou shalt not kill..." [pretty basic stuff here...]

I am sorry, but I do not accept that as a valid argument.  What if 
somebody came to take away your means of feeding your kids?
What if somebody was menacing you or your kids?
There are instances, as you seem to agree, when killing is justified. 
What is meant by the sentence is: Thou shalt not initiate lethal 
violence.  

> >but actually *obligated* to use physical violence in
> >certain contexts?  I guess not.
> 
> No, just not as first resort.
> 
> >  But many peoples think they have
> >to...
> 
> If they break my door down and want my gun or PGPkey, I shoot.
> No matter who, Jim Bell or Bill Clinton, they may die if they
> go far enough. I will not seek to kill anyone from afar, though, and
> I'd have to feel in fear of my life.

This is the dilemna that peoples in pre-war germany faced.  I met a
wonderfull old german gentleman who worked on the german radar
during the war.  I asked him about how Hitler was perceived by the
general thinking population.  He said that 60% of the population
tought very little of him, and did not agree with war.  Theses were
the educated germans.  But at the same time, since Hitler rallied
the other 40% of the population, the thugs at heart, they lived in
constant fear.  Nobody dared to say anything because nobody came
back from some interrogations...

And I was told the exact same thing by a previous girlfriend of mine, 
doing her PhD in chemistry.  She was iranian.  She had an irakian 
boyfriend for a while.  They were madly in love.  but what a fuss it 
made...  Anyhow, she told me that while in high school, seven of her 
schoolmate, sixteen years old girls, were taken from the classes by 
Khomeiny's political police.  Nobody, friends nor family, heard of them 
ever again.

AP simply turn the ethics of assasins toward other like minded.

Unfortunately, it can turn said mind toward valuable peoples too.  
And this is good reason to object.

> >I think that you simply try to evade the necessity of defining for
> >yourself what exactly is what the govt is doing.

> Taxation is theft, I fail to see your point. Well, depends.  

If you agreed to be taxed, then, maybe not.  But suppose it is: what
are the essentials of theft and what are the justified actions
againts it?  Now, does a kid stealing apples the same as the state
stealing individual's earned wealth ?  Does the same measure apply? 
Is the offense comparable?  (You must first define the exact context
of each)

> Murder isn't the sole, or even first, option to prevent theft when
> you can do things like lock doors. [encrypt]

In the case of govt, it have the legal monopoly on the use of
violence.  And it does not seem to hate using it.  But if you shoot
some govt official who decided that he wanted you PGP key or your
gun, you'll pay for it dearly even if you win in court.  The most
precious thing in life is time.  And the way we found, as rationnal
animals, to exchange time is to condense time into money.  Money is
an abstraction for productive time of our life.  The govt is working
very hard, at the victims expense, to make anything that can act as
a lock illegal.  And they enforce that with guns. So, do not surprize
yourself if many people find AP fully justified or is the only way 
left to them.

I do not advocate AP, notwithstanding what some others pretend (LD?). I
think that inducing the death of govt as we know it by financial
starvation through encrypted transactions is the way.  But I also
think that AP is impossible to prevent from happening because so
much peoples agree with the preceding paragraph.

> >> Even then, I prefer the judicial process to the oligarchy
> >> this scheme would entail
> >
> >This scheme is *not* an oligarchy.  Pay a visit to any good
> >dictionary near you.  Words have precise meaning and it is *much*
> >better to stick to it...
> 
> I said entail, *you* read a dictionary. The scheme relies on $, and
> more $ gives you more votes on who to kill. Oligarchy, a rule by the
> rich. I stuck exactly to it. Read more carefully.

Sorry, I don't have an english-french dictionnary.  But I think it 
means "might lead to" or "might imply".

Grand Larousse en 5 Volumes, Vol 4, p. 2229 : (I translate from
french)

Oligarchy: noun, feminine. (gr: oligarkhia) 1) political system in
which power is held by a small number of individuals who constitutes
either the intellectual elite (aristocracy) or the owning minority
(plutocracy ?), theses two aspect often coinciding.  2) when a
minority accaparates a power or an authority.

I have to do some more thinking on that.  I concede that I used the
wrong words.  To me, even if AP would fit the operationnal definition
of oligarchy, it is not.  Maybe because the definition had as a basic
premise that it is impossible to structure power without
communication. I think that anonymity technologies might force a
re-definition of the word in more precise terms.  In AP, it is
completely different in the sense that nobody agrees to the ideas of
other peoples.  They simply pass *their own* judgment using *their
own* reason and make *their own* decision to put a few bucks on this
or that head.  In oligarchy, the "intellectual elite" share some
common premises, ideas.  In AP, although you can derive a probability
distribution of the values held by the anonymous donators, they do
not actively share ideas.  And neither do the assassins.  There is no
collusion, no exchange of information, no peer pressure, no
conspiracy, no nothing.

The only factor is the wealth a given donator is willing to donate.  And
this makes it a "buckarchy", i.e. the ideas and values of peoples
who made it to wealth are statistically more likely to be
implemented.  But again, it is only a statistical, macroscopical
truth.  Only, theses peoples achieved wealth by sticking to a
certain type of values (considering that it takes years to
build a reputation and seconds to destroy it); they must have a stong
tendency toward a set of values that are pro-freedom, pro-economy,
and pro-productivity.  Laissez-faire, the french expression, means
"let do".

> >> and I think I'd be an easy target for wealthy statists,
> >>who could also use the system.

But OTOH, if you remain silent, you'll attract no one.

> >At first look, of course.  But operationnally, you have to consider
> >the mind of the statist to figure out the likeliness of their using
> >the system? I do not deny that it is very likely that a few
> >statists will use the system.  But most won't because they don't
> >like to slain their milk cows.
> 
> That's not how I view statists. your faith is admirable, but
> I won't share it soon.

Faith: zero, zip, none...

> hitler, Stalin, Clinton, they all
> would see me as hamburger just as soon as milkcow IMO. I
> have seen how history describes the minds of statists who
> don't get their way, it's not pretty.

(Did you read the complete AP essay?)

Yes.  But you also have to recognize that *never* in the history of 
mankind a media like the net ever existed.  The net is, IMO, a 
turning point in the history of humanity, just as the discovery of 
toolmaking was.  I think it will change the human history even more 
than the invention of the printing press.

> Many statists have
> the $ to kill me without AP, this would make me cheap and
> compromise the privacy of the remailernet probably, or just
> cause them to be outlawed.

A few questions here: Why any statists would want to target *you*?
There are plenty of guys like you who hates the guts of govt, have
big mouths,  and they don't get offed.  By being a C'punk, it is even
more dangerous for them: if they try to make an example by killing
you, the others CPunks will go underground, set up AP remailers and
get rid of them.  At least, they recognize that the last thing to do
in such circumstances, is to make martyrs.  Compare the number of
active posters to the number of readers, and you'll see that a lot of
C'punks stay in the shadow, without making any waves.  Now, to deal
with that volume of e-mail, one must have *some* sort of interest. 
Unless the silent majority *all* work for NSA... 

Ciao

JFA
PLEASE NOTE: THIS POST DOES NOT MEAN THAT I ENDORSE MR. BELL'S
SYSTEM.  MY RATIONNAL CONCLUSIONS ABOUT IT'S INTERNAL MECHANICS
AND IT'S INTRINSIC LOGICS DOES NOT MEAN THAT I LIKE NOR ENDORSE
THE SYSTEM. I SIMPLY CONCLUDED THAT IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO PREVENT
THE SYSTEM FROM BEING IMPLEMENTED.  IMO, IT IS UNAVOIDABLE.

 DePompadour, Societe d'Importation Ltee  
 Limoges porcelain, Silverware and mouth blown crystal glasses

 JFA Technologies, R&D consultants.
 Physists, technologists and engineers.

 PGP keys at: http://w3.citenet.net/users/jf_avon
 ID# C58ADD0D : 529645E8205A8A5E F87CC86FAEFEF891